4. Chapter 2
I looked at her up and down, and it didn’t take long. The girl was a wisp of something, wrapped in a loud orange coat.
She had brown skin, long dark hair, freckles over the bridge of her nose, and an eager smile.
“Who are you again?”
“I’m Julia, but if you’re going to be my landlord,you can call me Jules.”
She pushed her tiny hand toward me, her smile shining. I chuckled, baffled by her as I took her hand. “Theo.”
“Oh yes, I know.”
Something must be wrong with me, because suddenly, all I wanted was to hear this girl speak for hours.
She wasn’t just gorgeous—she had a nice accent too, a blend that soothed my soul. I looked at the bar where Owen stood, watching me like a hawk. When our eyes met, he lifted one eyebrow, and I tried to ignore it, hating being observed that closely.
“A beer, Owen,” I sighed, taking my cap off and scratching my scalp. “Let’s grab a seat,” I told the girl.
I headed to my usual place, and she followed along, bringing an intoxicating scent of flowers with her.
What was happening to me? I never noticed how tiny someone’s hands were before, or their perfume, though I knew instinctively Julia’s scent wasn’t the bottled type. She naturally smelled like that, like wild flowers and so much warmth that it felt like someone bottled the sun.
“I came all the way here for that mountain,” she pointed at the window behind the bar, “and your house is the best spot for me right now.”
I shook my strange feeling off and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. “You want to stay in my house?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I breathed deeply but regretted it right away. The longer I was in her presence, the more powerful her wild perfume became. I leaned back in the chair, trying to put space between us. “Let me see if I got this right: you want to be close to the mountain, and you think staying in a stranger’s house is the best solution?”
“I’m an artist.” She straightened her spine. “I want…” She worked something down her throat. “I need a good view of that mountain, and something is telling me I need to be in that house. Your house.”
Her jaw was set as she watched my house through the window, determination like I had never seen before etched into her face. My lips twitched in a smile, knowing already that I was going to bring this girl home, what Wylder and Noah thought be damned.
“You must think I’m crazy.” She chuckled, making a mess of her hair as she brushed it away from her face. “Can I be honest with you?”
She leaned over the table just as Owen dropped a pint of beer in front of me and another in front of her.
Her mouth opened in surprise, but she recovered quickly, mouthing a thank you before taking a big sip. I followed her lead.
“My parents were geniuses. They were so talented that the whole world is watching me now.”
“The whole world?” I repeated.
“The art world.” She waved it off like nothing else mattered. “They want to see what Julia Apaza is going to do next and…I’m… I’m stuck, Theo. Maybe I’m not good enough.”
Her big brown eyes swam with tears, and that shit broke me. A curse almost flew from my lips, a knot growing right in the middle of my chest.
Now her scent was everywhere. It didn’t matter if I tried to put distance between us. My head was dizzy with it, urging me to sniff her soft hair or the delicate skin of her neck.
It was the call.
It had to be the mating call.
What else would make me drunk on someone like this? My mouth hung open with the realization, but the girl kept going on and on about her parents and her new path in life.
She didn’t seem to know what was happening here.
She wasn’t from here, I was sure. We were a small community, dying out slowly. She seemed unaware of what we were, and while that was expected from tourists, none ever evoked the call on me.
Maybe it wasn’t the call.
I was almost forty years old, and I never felt it before, so maybe I just felt sorry for her. She was small, cute, and lost. She was still mourning her parents and clearly carried too much on her small shoulders.
“I know your cabin is going to help me,” she continued. “It’s where I need to be. I can’t explain, but I knew the moment I saw it.”
I took a sip to control my shaking hands, but my eyes never left her.
I wasn’t dumb enough to ask the other men. Owen was already suspicious, ready to tell everyone I was too soft, and let the beautiful stranger rope me into helping her.
They all pitted us, Wylder, Noah, and I. We were barely twenty when the last omega found her mates, and we’ve spent twenty years knowing we were doomed.
Our cabin was a sign of our solitude, right at the foot of the mountain, away from everything.
I came down to town regularly. I liked being around our people, but Noah couldn’t bear it. The loneliness ate him up the most, and he hid it all under a layer of grumpiness. He liked to growl and act like an uncivilized bear, but I knew him well enough to know it was all an act.
He always wanted a mate. He wanted to dote on someone, to be the big protector he was born to be, but when Marion settled down, he sunk into a depression that still gripped him to this day.
I wondered how would he react to Julia. Would he recognize the call?
Even as my heart started to beat out of my chest, I still had my doubts. She had no sign of recognizing us.
If wasn’t for her clear obsession with our house, I’d assume nothing called at her.
It was impossible, I knew. Our community was formed by the last alphas in Switzerland. We knew other countries still had them, but they usually kept to themselves, just like we did.
Kent, our leader, tried to build bridges with different communities across Europe before, maybe out of pity for us, but nothing ever came out of it.
“Where were you born?” I suddenly asked.
She didn’t seem too put off by my question. Rolling her shoulders, she replied, “America. My parents are from Bolivia. I just happened to be born when they were spending time in New York. I barely lived there.”
“You went back to Bolivia?”
Kent never contacted anyone outside of Europe. Maybe other communities around the globe were dying out too and wanted to set their omegas up with alphas. Maybe she was part of an outreach program or something.
But why wouldn’t she say so? Why come up with this mountain view nonsense?
No. Julia didn’t know.
“After New York, I think we lived in Paris for six months. I have some baby pictures there. And then Croatia and Poland. I know I was around three when we were in Russia. I think I was seven when we lived in Buenos Aires…”
“So you lived everywhere?” I cut her off.
She nodded. “Nowhere is home.”
Again, breaking my goddamn heart. She was hope, sadness, and relentless energy at the same time. She was a lot just to look at, her intensity overwhelming me.
I felt like I knew her, like I was meant to help her.
I had to close my hand in a fist so as not to reach for her silky hair, to keep my mouth shut and not ask personal questions.
I was friendly, sure, way more so than Wylder or Noah, but I wasn’t that friendly. The B I couldn't stand a second longer without touching her. It was too much. So I finished my beer at once, stood, and nodded. “Okay, Julia Apaza. You can stay at my home.”